Analysing Mexican Population Concentration: A Model with Empirical Evidence

Farhad Dehghan and Guillermo Vargas Uribe
Additional contact information
Farhad Dehghan: Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Platteville, Wisconsin 53818 U.S.A., Dehghan@am.uwplatt.edu
Guillermo Vargas Uribe: Department of Economics, University of Michoacan, Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico, gvargas@zeus.ccu.umich.mx

Urban Studies, 1999, vol. 36, issue 8, 1269-1281

Abstract: In this study, we analyse the economic determinants of population concentration in Mexico, estimating a time-series/cross-sectional model for 1895-1990 in which the Pareto coefficient is a measure of population concentration. The fundamental lesson of this paper is that there is a clear and unequivocal U-shaped pattern between population concentration and economic development. This finding was not confirmed in cross-national studies. Our results are consistent with central-place theory and suggest that as development proceeds, agglomeration benefits of large cities are exhausted and the optimum level of production is exceeded. Hence, government policies aimed at encouraging decentralisation may not interfere with economic growth and efficiency. Our findings point to the significant non-linear relationship between population concentration and a number of variables in the model including total population, urbanisation ratio, total land area, population density and central government expenditure. The significance of the central government expenditure coefficient in most versions of the model indicates that this variable plays an important role in shaping the city-size distribution in Mexico.

Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/0042098992980 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:36:y:1999:i:8:p:1269-1281

DOI: 10.1080/0042098992980

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().